When?
by dgharron
Summary: This is a missing scene that might have happened sometime during the summer right after Callie graduates from high school. It assumes readers are very familiar with season one and the first part of season two. It is just a simple conversation which i wanted to explore and hope others find it enjoyable. Thanks


**AN: a little piece of fluff i wanted to get in. Hope people enjoy it, as always feed back is requested and valued. This is a missing scene, or more to the point. something i imagine might happen some time after the graduation. As i haven't watched any of the last part of the season-no tv. i assume i am not covering material that was included in the show.**

"When did you know?" Lena is looking at the wall of photos by the stairs and the question wrong foots her.

Her first response, mostly about her own exasperation, is what the hell is Callie is doing up at 4 in the morning. She keeps that thought to herself, however, and takes time to mull the question. If she knows to what Callie is referring, then there is no simple answer.

Callie waits, she understands Lena thinks before she talks, but that doesn't prevent her from asking her question again, more insistent "When did you know?"

Language has its owns music, and the rhythm of the question matches the rhythm of another question asked ,well really demanded , during what now seems to have almost been another life.

" _Where do I sleep_?"

And that question is one of the reasons she was standing here in the first place, staring at family photos, reflecting back on all the changes, when she would be better off sleeping.

It is complicated. Twenty years of school, three years of research into child development and 12 years in the field. There could be a miniature professional educator and an informed parent sitting on her shoulder and whispering text book answers to these question insistently into her ear.

Callie will always be a late stage adoption kid . ACES. PTSD, Reactive Atachment. There is a whole chapter in the DSM dedicated to kids like Callie. Tested ways of helping parents handle questions about love and adoption. Except Callie is her child, and not some kid and, even at the start of the process, she was already more adult than most people could ever hope to be.

Lena would lie if it would help, but she knows in her gut that it won't. Standing in the hall, Callie waiting, she wishes she had more courage was bolder. This isn't the first time at 4am in the morning she has worried that her tact and polish mask cowardice and fear.

"Stef made up her mind on the way back from San Ysidro!" Is her careful non-answer.

Callie raises her eyebrows the surprise evident on her face. Her lips form a thin line as she keeps eyeing the woman.

Silence, but its weighted, they both know more needs to come.

So, Lena continues.

"I think it took her about 5 miles of driving to really process everything; what you did, Jude, Brandon. At some point she was so distracted we were only doing 35 on I-5. But after that It was pretty much a done deal." She smiles.

Callie looks at her not with hostility, but not satisfied either.

"When did you know?"

Four syllables rapped out in that cadence. Lena can't escape it she's cornered, right here in her house. It makes her angry to be pushed. "Your voice doesn't go up in the end, " She observes dryly "your making a question, but it sound's like a statement."

Callie grunts and looks at the women, her mama. Both mom's they're Greek God's to her, Zeus and Juno. Fallible but immortal. They do and know things she can only imagine. Though lately...she's been wondering.

She tips her head to the side, looking at the older woman. She wants to know, but there is an amused smile in her eyes. She bring a thumb to her mouth and unconsciously gnaws on it. "You haven't answered the question, you know."

"I know," Lena nods acknowledging , laughing a little at her self, hating that she couldn't just give the girl what she wanted. Yet she doesn't want to admit that her love grew slowly at first. That it was hard and scary and not at all normal, that although she wants to be soft and giving, she knows herself to be sometimes rocky soil and that deep underneath her crafted warmth, there is infertile clay.

But the books say you can't give kids your worries. Clinical PHD's are tutorials in burying your feelings. These fragile kids need reassurance, and as much constancy as you can provide. It is suppose to be love at first sight. Instantaneous. The family should be something given, simply meant to be. Something permanent, waiting to be expressed by the child's arrival, as natural as a birth mothers love. .

Only its not how it happened. And Lena's gut tells her a text book answer would sound false, like she was hiding something. Not that she wouldn't like to have that have happend. But its a balance there is a safety in honesty too, otherwise life just gets to confusing.

She is still stalling for time, Lena feels, what? Guilty? About what? That she was furious with the girl for putting the family in danger. And that when Kelsey accused Callie of selling drugs her first reaction was to Call Bill to come get both kids. She wanted them "OUT-OF-THE -HOUSE."

Thank God, instead she picked-up the phone and called Stef. "You have to at least hear the girls side of the story, Lena." And so she listened and learned.

And now she can't even start to count sacrifices she's made for this elusive string bean of a child, grown taught and full, but still young. And she would do it all again gladly. So she turns back to the pictures, the twins age 5 stare at her. Jesus sitting cockily, arm draped over Mariana's shoulder, his eyes wide and dark like a puppy's, Mariana's blank and somber.

"I've read that people are wired to love babies. Just the look of big eyes and bubbly head sets the oxytocin pumping. We didn't get that chance with you." She sighs.

"Mom saw you in that house and as we drove back, got the whole thing. It just fell into place for her."

Callie just nods, she has her own memories of that day. Certainly no little part of it is an endless 20 minute ride in a dark car with stef's intense blue eyes searing back at her from the rear view mirror.

" She was the first person who stood-up for me." She pauses "In the house ,"and just stops, shuts down.

Lena feels her heart breaking, even 3 years on Calli can't talk directly about some things. "Good god" she thinks to herself, "a fifteen year old had a gun waved in her face and I wanted to throw the girl away because I resented having to witness it while sitting in the safety of a Subaru?"

Callie, however, is lost in her own world and is speaking as much to the wall of pictures as she is to Lena, "I knew what she did wasn't just for me, but.. I thought I was going to be shot and then..." her voice trails off.

There is quiet between them and they stand together in the pre-dawn grey,

Lena picks-up the thread gently soft stepping around the fact that she will never have Stef's super hero MO. She is resigned to walking quietly, plod,plod plod. A contrast to Stef 's ability to leap amazingly into the unknown. "Well Mom, right? for me it was more gradual. It grew you know, like you grew." And words flow, its her story and it has a logic and warmth. She's a parent but with Callie, there was an adult quality to the relationship, as it should be, and the memory feels good.

"It was little things, sitting on our bed playing monopoly, how all the kids trusted you."

Callie looks at Lena. Eyebrows raised , not exactly in disbelief, but..

"Don't scoff, off course there were bumps, that's kids, and I know you went out of your way to keep the peace, Don't think we didn't see you walking around as if the floor was made of egg shells, but you were never, mean. A little cold, and hard, but never mean. You never pile on."

"There is just little things I remember, the night before the quinciera the way you reacted to my mom's gifts, weird little things."

Lena inhales, sharply, " I guess, I knew, really knew, at the hospital." her voice breaks. She can never talk about the shooting without crying "They only allowed direct relatives to see stef, and the twins were so scared and guilty they looked frozen, but when i looked at them I couldn't' get the image of them at 5 out of my head. And I looked at you standing next to Mariana and I thought thank god your, safe, and I got this clarity. No matter what happens, You were our daughter, Jude was our son period. Everything else was I don't know,details?

Callie nods quietly, "It takes time, I mean its odd, to just _become_ someone's child"

Lena feels her heart thumping, flushed with pride that she is a part of this kids life. That together they've built something so sturdy Callie can risk this conversation. Can say that her love is complex and changeable and that it is not out of a story book or Disney film, but that it is still something solid and tangible.

" I mean Stef in the house was amazing, but ...feeling like I was your daughter...It sort of piled up, sneaked up on me with out realizing."

"What I remember most is sitting on the bed locked in that stupid room at that woman's house thinking, this is crazy they just took me away from my mom's'. I was angry, at you both, for being so careless, but I never once doubted you'd come for me. It was an uncanny to all of a sudden realize to know deep down, that I was going to be missed."

Lena wipes her eyes, " We did" she pauses and smiles "We will." She turns back toward the pictures and Callie by her side. There is a grey light coming through the window and they stand looking at the past, envisioning a future.


End file.
